Complications in the Life of a Mop Girl
by Venus Smurf
Summary: Momoko's life is complicated enough-restarting time, saving lives, and still holding down a nine-to-five job-but then one of the killings hits a little too close to home, and Momoko suddenly isn't the only one repeating time. Based on "Mop Girl."
1. Here We Go Again

**A.N.:**I doubt that many people have encountered this particular Asian drama yet—it was just barely released, and so far only four episodes have English subtitles—but it really is amazing.

In fact, consider this a **challenge**: watch the show (PM me if you're interested, and I'll tell you where to find it, since it's not even on YouTube yet), and then write stories of your own. I've gotten several fanfic websites to create a category for this show, but I need more writers contributing. Pretty please?

Oh, and a sage is a call to take away a dead body. I usually don't bother with Japanese terms—it'd be silly when I'm writing in English—but this one seemed to be some sort of technical term, so I figured I'd go ahead.

* * *

_When Momoko was young, a woman died saving her from an oncoming car. Before she passed, the woman somehow gave Momoko the ability to repeat days. When the adult Momoko goes to work at a funeral parlor, she finds that by touching the belongings of somebody who has been murdered, she can repeat the day they died and (usually) save them. Though Momoko keeps this ability to herself, she often relies on one of her coworkers, Otomo Shoutarou—a womanizing but very clever jerk—and her best friend, Hina, to help her save lives. _

_All well and good, at least until one of the killings hits a little too close to home, and Momoko isn't the only one repeating time._

* * *

"Complications in the Life of a Mop Girl"

* * *

CHAPTER ONE: Here We Go Again

* * *

"I think she's asleep."

"She can't be. She's standing up."

"Do you really think that would stop someone like Momoko?"

Collective eye roll, because they all knew it wouldn't. Not even gravity could hinder Momoko when she was set on something, and it wasn't even the first time she'd done this. They really needed to stop putting her on the night shift.

"Do you think we should wake her up?"

"No. If we leave her, she'll eventually fall over."

"And then we get to laugh, right?"

"And then we get to laugh."

"Can't we just push her, then?"

The words were spoken without any malice at all—as annoyingly odd as Momoko could sometimes be, most of them liked the girl well enough. She was just…not stupid, but rather simple, and it would have required a super-human effort not to tease her.

In the end, though, the decision was taken out of their hands. As Momoko's coworkers debated the merits of pushing Momoko rather than simply letting her fall on her own, the office door slid open, and a tall, rather handsome man stepped into the room. He pushed the door shut behind him, took another step or two before noticing the sleeping girl and the small group gathered around her. He needed only an instant to understand, but he only sighed and shook his head. "That girl…" he muttered, his voice both lacking any real heat and too low for the others to hear.

The employees of the Little Angel funeral services hadn't noticed the newcomer, and they continued to not notice him as he moved towards them. They were too focused on Momoko's rather vacant expression to realize that Shoutarou was even behind them…at least until his hand snaked between them and Momoko was already falling over.

The impact from Shoutarou's hand had been enough to wake Momoko, and she gave a startled squeak as she went down, her cry immediately becoming one of pain as her head thumped against the hard tiles of the floor. Laughter erupted around her, but she ignored it, choosing to stay where she'd fallen until the pain faded and she could deal with the man she instinctively knew was to blame.

Her coworkers returned to their desks, their entertainment over, and a moment later, Momoko pushed herself to her feet. She was still rubbing her forehead as she stomped across the room, stopping to glare down at Shoutarou. "Jerk," she muttered at him, her words more of a pout than an accusation. She was far too used to Shoutarou to really get angry with him.

He only stared back, managing to keep his expression completely blank in spite of the laughter in his eyes.

* * *

The rest of the day passed without incident. Shoutarou continued to tease Momoko, Momoko continued to pout at him, and their coworkers continued to ignore what would have been flirting between anyone else…at least until midmorning, when the call for a sage came in.

Mr. Higashi, the soft-spoken president of Little Angel and the only one who never laughed at Momoko, listened intently to the voice on the other end of the phone. An expression of genuine but detached sorrow crossed his features, but he only listened in silence. "Yes, I see," he murmured at last, "I'll send someone immediately." He placed the phone back on its cradle without bothering to say goodbye, then glanced over at Shoutarou. "Mr. Otomo," he called, still in that gentle voice of his.

Shoutarou glanced up from the magazine he'd been reading, his expression already schooled into a mask of polite interest as he stood and quickly made his way over to his superior. "Has there been a death?"

For all that he'd spent most of the day teasing a girl several years younger than himself, Shoutarou's voice had become remarkably professional, and Mr. Higashi only nodded and began giving the details. "Take Momoko and retrieve the body," he finished.

Whatever he thought of that last order, Shoutarou only nodded in return. He, too, began to turn away, stopped as Higashi called his name once more.

Mr. Higashi always looked a little too serious, but his eyes were more worried than usual. "Look after Momoko," he murmured in a voice too low for anyone else to hear. "She's been…depressed lately. Take care of her."

A single dark eyebrow shot into Shoutarou's hairline, but he only nodded yet again. Higashi wasn't the only one who'd noticed how quiet Momoko had become in the past few weeks, though neither man was the type to question her. Higashi didn't want to invade the girl's privacy, and Shoutarou dealt with Momoko's problems too often already.

* * *

The rain started almost the moment Shoutarou and his young partner left the building, and it was still pouring as they tried to maneuver the bulky vehicle through the surprisingly heavy traffic. Cars were inching along at a snail's pace, and only a few minutes into the drive, they stopped altogether.

Shoutarou surveyed the packed vehicles in front of them with a mildly annoyed expression. "There must have been an accident," he mused aloud, briefly looking for another route and then realizing he wouldn't be able to get the truck out anyway. There just wasn't room to move, and from the look of things, they wouldn't be going anywhere for quite some time.

He sighed, leaned back in the driver's seat and crossed his arms over his chest, then glanced over at his silent companion. Momoko was staring out the window, her forehead resting against the glass, her hands a little too motionless in her lap. Her face was turned away, but while he couldn't see her eyes, he could tell that she was frowning. "Momoko?"

The unspoken question was almost kind, at least coming from him, but she didn't respond. She only continued staring out into the rain, and he wondered if she'd even heard him.

_That girl…_

He sighed yet again, hoping this wasn't going to be another of Momoko's odd days. He really wasn't in the mood to deal with her fantasies, especially since they always seemed to involve a lot of running around on his part.

And missed dates. Couldn't forget the missed dates.

Shoutarou eventually turned his attention back to the road, entertaining himself by looking for foreign women in the cars around them. _Ooh…that blonde looks like she could be French. Do I dare leave Momoko alone long enough to run over there and get her number? _

The question didn't require much thought at all. _Probably not. Even with the truck practically parked, even if I shut off the engine completely and take the keys with me, Momoko will find a way to crash it. _

The silence continued, but long after Shoutarou had lost interest even in the blonde woman and was practically dozing in his chair, Momoko's soft, hesitant voice startled him back into awareness.

"How did he die?"

The question startled him even more—she'd been so obviously lost in her own world that he hadn't been expecting anything at all from her—but he only blinked at her. "Who?"

She didn't turn around. "The man who died today. Was he murdered?"

It was an odd question, even from the very odd Momoko, and there was something in her voice that he didn't like. She sounded…not quite haunted, but close enough to it. "No. They obviously haven't done an autopsy yet, but the paramedics thought he died from a heart attack."

Silence, then… "Oh. That's good."

She didn't say anything else, but he continued to stare at her, because this just wasn't like Momoko. The strangeness of her question aside, where was her energy? Usually she'd be asking all sorts of questions about the deceased, wondering what their lives had been like, wanting to know who they'd left behind and whether they'd been happy. This morose, quiet Momoko was making him uneasy.

Momoko had already gone back into her own world, but the silence was heavier this time, almost ominous. What was going on with this girl?

* * *

Sakamoto Makoto's body had been found in the underground parking structure of a hotel, one hand still clutching at his chest, the other tightly gripping a set of keys. The paramedic who'd pronounced him dead at the scene assumed that he'd been trying to get into his car when his heart failed him. Pity that he'd died, the paramedic added, but at least he hadn't been on the road. There'd been enough accidents that day.

By the time Momoko and Shoutarou arrived, the corpse had already been placed in a body bag. Momoko was grateful for that, because while she no longer panicked when faced with the dead, she knew she would never have the blasé attitude Shoutarou and the others had long since perfected. She would never stop wondering who these people had been, what they'd left undone, what they were losing by dying.

And she would never stop wondering if she could still save them.

Momoko bit her lip as she helped Shoutarou load the body onto a stretcher and then into the van, grateful that at least this man's death had been relatively easy. A flash of pain, a moment of panic, and the struggle had been over. She wished it could be this peaceful for all of them, and not only because it would mean Momoko's curse would sleep. She hated knowing that others had suffered.

It didn't take long to finish loading the body, and since the death had been so clean, they didn't have any reason to linger. They climbed back into the truck, Momoko trying very hard not to think of their silent passenger, Shoutarou obviously not caring. A familiar, almost comfortable silence fell between them, and Momoko turned back to the window.

* * *

They hadn't even finished the paperwork at the morgue when the second call came in. Shoutarou excused himself and slipped outside, his cell tight against his ear. Momoko watched him go, then turned back to her forms with a barely audible sigh.

Sometimes paperwork was even more tedious than repeating time. At least she only had to live her days twice—the forms came in triplicate.

She'd just completed the final bit of paperwork when Shoutarou returned, and Momoko needed only one glance at his expression to know that the news would not be good.

"There's been another death," Shoutarou told her, the words quiet enough that the morgue attendant wouldn't overhear. "A woman this time." He sighed, shaking his head. "She fell from a rooftop. The police think she might have been pushed."

Momoko paled. "She was murdered?"

Shoutarou shot her an odd look, but he only motioned for her to follow him from the morgue. "It's too early to tell," he said as he ushered her towards the company van, "but there were signs of a struggle on the roof."

Momoko barely heard him. _Oh, gods, _she was thinking,_ not again._

* * *

The woman's death had not been clean. She'd fallen from the top of a building six stories high, and her body had shattered on impact. Even Shoutarou looked faintly sick as he and Momoko waited for the police to finish processing the crime scene, and if there'd been any color at all in Momoko's face, she would have looked positively green.

And it was, Momoko barely noticed the nausea she was feeling. She was too busy trying not to panic. _I can save her, _she reminded herself. _I won't let this be like the last one. _

_I won't let her be another Kohei. _

Thoughts of the cartoonist she hadn't saved flooded her mind, but Momoko almost savagely pushed them away. She didn't think she'd ever stop grieving for the man or feeling guilty for not preventing his death, but this wasn't the time for that. She needed to focus on this new woman, on stopping a different killer.

_The case, _she reminded herself, her mental voice as firm as she could make it. _Be smart about this—get the details of the case before you return to the past. _

She swallowed, forced herself to walk nearer the body. She couldn't help glancing once at the woman's ruined face, but even as she watched, two officers came and began zipping her into another nondescript body bag. Momoko looked away, turning instead to Shoutarou. He and his police friend were standing close by, their eyes resolutely turned away from the woman's corpse as they discussed her death.

"…Asami Reina," the Assistant Inspector was saying. "She worked in the hospital, but we still don't know why she was on the roof. From what her coworkers have said, she didn't have any reason to be there. Nobody did."

Shoutarou nodded. "You mentioned signs of a struggle."

The Inspector sighed, apparently not caring that he was giving the details of an ongoing investigation to a civilian. "The gravel on the roof has been disturbed. There might have been a fight, but of course that's not something we can really prove. Anything might have moved the gravel, though it looks recent." He paused, then added, "We also found a woman's silver compact. We're still trying to determine if it was hers."

"That's a little odd. Women don't go to rooftops just to powder their noses. Was there anything else?"

The Inspector only shook his head. "Not that we could find. Of course, we're still interviewing her coworkers. One of them might know something."

Shoutarou's features twisted in thought, but before he could say anything more, Momoko stepped over to them and began tugging on Shoutarou's sleeve. "You don't have any suspects at all, then?"

The Inspector eyed her for a second or two, then visibly shrugged. "No. As far as we can tell, she didn't have any enemies. She was just a secretary, and she hadn't been working here long enough to really make an enemy anyway. There just wasn't any reason to kill her."

Momoko bit her lip. "It just can't be easy, can it?" she muttered to herself, ignoring the startled looks the two men were giving her. She turned back to the Inspector, pasting what she hoped was a flirtatious smile onto her face. "Inspector," she asked, not even trying to be coy in spite of the smile, "did the victim leave any belongings behind?" She didn't give him time to answer. "Like the compact? Can I see it?"

Shoutarou's eyes sharpened slightly at the question, but the Inspector didn't notice. He was grinning rather stupidly back at Momoko, a sly smile of his own twisting his lips. He glanced surreptitiously at the crime scene around them, then suddenly motioned the two of them to come closer.

Momoko and Shoutarou automatically leaned closer, Momoko with a face that had suddenly become even paler, Shoutarou with that same hard look. The harshness of his expression only deepened as the Inspector pulled a plastic bag from his pocket, holding it up for Momoko to see.

The girl eyed the compact with a frown. "You're certain this is hers?"

Once again, she didn't wait for an answer. Her eyes were locked on the compact, her attention so focused on the thing that would activate her gift and send her back in time that she didn't even notice when Shoutarou reached out and laid a restraining hand on her arm. "Momoko?"

She didn't hear him, either. She was already reaching for the evidence, her lower lip caught between her teeth as her fingers brushed against the plastic.

And then time shifted, and the world changed, and Shoutarou's sudden cry didn't matter.


	2. All Wrong

_When Momoko was young, a woman died saving her from an oncoming car. Before she passed, the woman somehow gave Momoko the ability to repeat days. When the adult Momoko goes to work at a funeral parlor, she finds that by touching the belongings of somebody who has been murdered, she can repeat the day they died and (usually) save them. Though Momoko keeps this ability to herself, she often relies on one of her coworkers, Otomo Shoutarou—a womanizing but very clever jerk—and her best friend, Hina, to help her save lives. _

_All well and good, at least until one of the killings hits a little too close to home, and Momoko isn't the only one repeating time._

_

* * *

  
_

CHAPTER TWO: All Wrong

* * *

_The girl eyed the compact with a frown. "You're certain this is hers?" _

_Once again, she didn't wait for an answer. Her eyes were locked on the compact, her attention so focused on the thing that would activate her gift and send her back in time that she didn't even notice when Shoutarou reached out and laid a restraining hand on her arm. "Momoko?" _

_She didn't hear him, either. She was already reaching for the evidence, her lower lip caught between her teeth as her fingers brushed against the plastic._

_And then time shifted, and the world changed, and Shoutarou's sudden cry didn't matter._

_

* * *

  
_

Momoko was always surprised by how much traveling through time hurt. She never quite got used to the way her ears would ring or how much her head would pound after she'd shifted through the hours, and on her more frustrating days, she sometimes wondered if the woman who'd given her this curse had ever found a way to avoid the inevitable migraine.

"…really think that would stop someone like Momoko?"

The words barely registered in Momoko's mind, though some dim part of her recognized that the speaker was only a few inches away. She was still struggling with the effects of time travel and with the sudden exhaustion that had nothing to do with her gift and everything to do with the hours she'd worked the night before the murder.

"Do you think we should wake her up?"

"No. If we leave her, she'll eventually fall over…"

Something wasn't right. Momoko knew it even before she'd fully returned to awareness, though she couldn't quite…

"…we just push her, then?"

The ensuing debate triggered something in her memory, brought her back to herself, and Momoko suddenly tensed.

_Shoutarou. _

_Shoutarou and pushing._

_Shoutarou and pushing and…that jerk!_

Her eyes flew open, her coworkers jumped back with only mildly guilty expressions, and Momoko spun to face the man who'd been tormenting her for months.

Only he wasn't there.

"Eh?" Momoko cocked her head, brown eyes already scanning the room for the man who should have been there but wasn't. "Otomo-san…but he should be…and he isn't…what's going on?"

She hadn't forgotten that she wasn't alone, but of course the words had come before she'd really stopped to think of how this might look. Still, she needn't have worried. Her colleagues were too used to her oddities, and of them all, only Akira chose to comment.

"You tell us," he muttered, throwing Momoko a look that was both confused and slightly annoyed. "Tch. Crazy girl…"

Momoko ignored him. She'd already turned to face the door, her eyebrows still drawn together in her confusion.

_Shoutarou should have pushed me, but he's not even here. Why isn't he here? _

Momoko stepped over to Kataoka's desk as the others returned to their own places, a puzzled frown gathering in her eyes. "Where's Mr. Otomo?"

Kataoka only shrugged, attention already absorbed in her files though she'd been torturing Momoko only a minute before. "He hasn't shown up yet."

Something unpleasant settled in Momoko's stomach. "But that's not…" She trailed off, belatedly changed her approach. "Has anyone heard from him today?"

The other woman only shrugged again, and Momoko swallowed. _It's different. It shouldn't be different, not when I haven't started changing things. _

She tried telling herself that it didn't matter and that she was making too much of Shoutarou's absence, but she couldn't quite shake the conviction that something was very wrong. Things didn't…change like this, not on their own.

Kataoka had slipped back into her work and wasn't paying the slightest bit of attention to the younger girl, but Momoko forced a shaky smile to her lips before slipping away. She ducked into the alcove behind the filing cabinets, quickly pulling her phone from her pocket and began dialing a number from memory.

She hunched over as the line tried to connect, putting her fingers in her other ear to block the sounds her coworkers weren't actually making and waited with growing impatience for the call to be accepted.

The ringing seemed far too loud and Momoko paused yet again, confusion once again taking over her expression. "Why is there an echo?" she asked aloud, pulling the phone from her ear and staring down at it with a bewilderment that, in her exhausted state, bordered on stupidity.

"Why are you calling me?"

Momoko jumped and spun, nearly dropping her phone completely as she turned to face the man behind her, jumped again as she realized just how closely he was standing.

Shoutarou was standing behind her, his phone open and held in front of her face, the ringing from his cell echoing through hers. _Well, that explains that. _

Momoko blinked at him, her expression still far too confused. "Where were you?"

He just stared at her, his own eyes unreadable, his expression curiously hard. "None of your business," he finally told her, his words slightly harsher than usual as he slid his phone back into the pocket of his pants.

She wasn't offended by his tone or even by the words—this _was _Shoutarou, after all, and he'd never been particularly kind to her—but her confusion only grew. Had Shoutarou been behaving normally, he'd have hit her at least twice by now. The fact that he was only walking away…

_Something is definitely wrong, but it's not like Shoutarou knows that the day has restarted. It's not like he could realize just how wrong things have become._

She shook herself, started to walk towards her own desk then belatedly realized that she had bigger problems than the stack of paperwork Akira had just dumped on her desk.

_Reina_, she reminded herself. _I have to save Reina. _

…_and Sakamoto Makoto, too, _she suddenly thought. _I can't stop a heart attack, but maybe if I convince him to go to a hospital…? _

It was worth a try.

Momoko nodded to herself, knowing she didn't have much time to waste. She had to find Mokoto and convince him to see a doctor, and then she had to find the would-be killer of Asami Reina.

And she barely even knew where to start. She had no suspects, no motive, and only a vague time frame in which the murder could have happened.

She was screwed.

_Shoutarou_, she immediately decided. _If anyone can figure this out, it's him. _

Momoko spun, eyes searching the room for Shoutarou. He'd disappeared again—that wasn't unusual—but she knew him well enough by now that finding his most recent hiding place wasn't even remotely a problem.

_Come out, come out, wherever you are…_

She found him in the restroom. He was hiding in one of the stalls, pretending to use the toilet but really just reading that day's paper.

Momoko rolled her eyes. Shotarou was good at his job—no doubt about that—but the man was just so incredibly _lazy_.

She sighed, then reached out and almost hesitantly knocked on the stall door. "Mr. Otomo…"

The paper stopped rustling from within, but after a moment of silence, Shoutarou groaned. "Go away, Hasegawa. I don't care what your precious Grandma has told you to do this time—I'm not getting involved."

She blinked at him through the door, genuinely startled. "How'd you know? That Grandma sent another vision, I mean?"

There was a tense pause that lasted far too long, and then he gave a long-suffering sigh. "Because that's just the way this day has gone," he muttered. "And I'm still not helping you. Go bother someone else with your delusions."

_There isn't anyone else. _

It was uncomfortably true. As much as she hated her curse, there were few people Momoko trusted enough to help her. Hina was too wrapped up in herself to really be of use, and she knew better than to involve her father or brother in anything. And as little as she sometimes liked him, Shoutarou could be surprisingly useful once he got into something.

_I still say the man is wasted in a funeral parlor. He should have been a thief or a con artist. Or maybe a host, considering how much he likes chasing after women._

"Go _away_, Momoko."

She'd forgotten what she'd been trying to do. Momoko shook herself, then raised a fist and began pounding on the stall door. "A woman is going to be murdered in a few hours!" she wailed, suddenly panicking at the thought of trying to do this on her own. She could save one, maybe, but both? It wasn't possible without help. It might not even be possible _with _help. "Someone is going to push her off a roof! Don't you even care?"

Another long pause. Then…

"_No_. Go _away_."

That wasn't an option. "I can't do this on my own! I don't even know who's going to do it, or why, and if I try to convince that other guy to go to a hospital before he has a heart attack, he's just going to think I'm crazy! You're the one who always comes up with the good lies! You have to help me!"

She'd continued pounding on the door throughout the entire tirade, not realizing that her words probably hadn't made sense, and it wasn't until after Shoutarou had grabbed her wrist that she realized he'd opened the door and was now glaring down at her.

"_What did you say_?"

His voice was too intent, and as she blinked rather stupidly up at him, she suddenly found herself thinking that he was much too close. "Um…you're a better liar?"

She hadn't thought he'd be this offended by that. In fact, Shoutarou being Shoutarou, she'd thought he'd take it as a compliment. What was wrong with him today?

His glare deepened, and she immediately tried to pull away.

He wasn't having it. His fingers actually tightened around her wrist, and she wondered if she'd have bruises later. "What did you say about the man with the heart attack?"

She blinked. "Um…there's actually two people who are going to die today," she mumbled, still confused by the intensity of his reaction. "Asami Reina is going to be pushed off a hospital roof, and another man is going to have a heart attack in a parking garage. I thought that maybe we can get him to a doctor before it happens…"

She knew she was babbling, but she couldn't help it. The way he was staring at her…she hadn't been this uncomfortable in a long, long time. "You can let go now…"

He still didn't. "When?"

Huh? "Well, now would be great. I mean, you're kind of hurting me…"

He _did _hit her that time, the fingers of his free hand coming, lightening-quick, against her forehead.

"_Ow,_" she protested, momentarily forgetting the pain in her wrist as she immediately started rubbing at her forehead. "That _hurt_."

"No, you stupid girl, when are they supposed to die?"

Oh, that. She looked at her watch again, noting that they didn't have much time before the man's body would be found. "Grandma didn't tell me," she admitted, once again cursing herself for not getting that important fact before she jumped through time. "Any time now, though. If we hurry…"

She trailed off again, but he was already dragging her out the bathroom door and into the main office area. Their coworkers looked a little startled as Shoutarou pulled her into the office, still holding her wrist as he snagged his coat from the back of his chair. "She has a family emergency," he told their boss as he started yanking her towards the exit.

If Higashi thought that was odd, he chose not to say anything. He only smiled at them, waving them out the door and then pretending to go back to his own work though his eyes were still glued to the hand on Momoko's wrist. Neither Momoko nor Shoutarou noticed the smug, pleased smile that briefly lifted the corner's of his mouth as the taller man forced his younger colleague from the building.

"It's about time," the president muttered as the door slammed shut.


End file.
